Cynewulf

Cynewulf

(kĭn`əwo͝olf', ko͝on`–), fl. early 9th cent.?, Old English religious poet of Northumbria or Mercia. Four poems have been ascribed to him on the evidence of his signatures in runes in the text of each of these poems. The poems, all more explicitly didactic than any earlier works, are: Juliana,The Ascension, Elene, and The Fates of the Apostles. Other poems, formerly thought his, are now attributed to poets of the "Cynewulf school."

Bibliography

See The Poems of Cynewulf (tr. by C. W. Kennedy, 1949); E. R. Anderson, Cynewulf: Structure, Style, and Theme in His Poetry (1983).

Cynewulf

, Kynewulf, Cynwulf

?8th century ad, Anglo-Saxon poet; author of Juliana, The Ascension, Elene, and The Fates of the Apostles

Allowing us to establish quite detailed acquaintance with Cynewulfs medieval opus, Cotter most convincingly demonstrates Hopkins' potential borrowing from that work when he compares Hopkins' sense of his "fling[ing] of [his own] heart to the heart of the Host" ("Wreck," st.

The four poems now attributed to Cynewulf, on the strength of his runic autographs appended to each, Christ II, Elene, The Fates of the Apostles, and Juliana are written in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of heroic alliterative verse that Anglo-Saxons had inherited from their continental Germanic ancestors.

The three poems, "Advent," "The Ascension," and "The Last Judgment," written in the second half of the eighth century, have been attributed to Cynewulf whose runic signature is inscribed into the final lines of "The Ascension.

In subsequent chapters, which deal in turn with the Cynewulf and Cyneheard episode from the Chronicle, with The Battle of Brunanburh and other `political' verse in the employ of the later West Saxon state, and with The Battle of Maldon, the warrior `ethic' is seen increasingly to solidify into doctrine in the service of political propaganda: these texts develop thematic interests in such issues as the authority of kings (including the repercussions of their deposition) and the legitimization of royal power by genealogical and martial means; the sanction here rests ultimately with the preeminent role of the (just) lord, in whose service retainers are expected unswervingly to define themselves even, in the case of Maldon and the apotheosis of the ideal, unto death.

Cross and Andrew Hamer), Sodom and Gomorrah in Alfredian prose (Allen Frantzen), the sources of AElfric's Homily on the Holy Innocents (Joyce Hill), the Old English translation of Wonders of the East (Ann Knock), Fulk's Letter to Alfred (Janet Nelson), the Book of Nunnaminster (Barbara Raw), Cynewulf and Cyneheard (D.

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